Innovative Ways to Create Smart Sustainable Cities, Part 2 of 2

On today’s program, we’ll continue to visit cities using innovative ways to become more sustainable. Copenhagen, Denmark, widely considered one of the world’s greenest cities, plans to be the planet’s first carbon-neutral capital city by 2025. One of the main ways Copenhagen has become greener is by encouraging its citizens to use bicycles instead of cars. To reduce its carbon footprint even further, the city is converting its bus fleet and harbor ferries to electric power. The first electric buses are scheduled to be operational in June 2021. Copenhagen is also a leader in waste management. Less than 2% of the city’s waste goes to landfills; the rest is either recycled or converted into energy at an ultra-modern waste-energy power plant called Copenhill. Over the years, Prato has been expanding its textile recycling facilities. It now processes around 143,000 tons of recycled fabrics each year. Used fabrics are sorted by color, processed into their original fibers, and then manufactured into new items.

Many urban areas are using technology to solve day-to-day problems while also saving precious resources. For example, in many cities, finding a parking spot for your vehicle can be a real challenge. To resolve this issue, the city of Adelaide in Australia has developed a smart parking system. The Park Adelaide smart phone app provides users with real-time information about available parking spots. This helps a driver navigate to a space, enables the user to pay for parking, and also sends an alert when the parking session is about to expire.

Climate change, bringing with it intense heat, heavy rainfall, and water scarcity, is becoming one of the most serious threats to the sustainability of cities all around the globe. Supreme Master Ching Hai also frequently reminds us that the fastest, most efficient solution to the problem of climate change is to adopt the noble, compassionate organic vegan lifestyle. “The carbon reduction is immense by just being vegan. We don’t even need to cut down on cars and transportation yet; just being vegan having animal-free diet, we will cut a huge amount of carbon dioxide to stop the global warming.”